To verify in the light of scientific knowledge the titles which the Bible can truly present to the veneration of the Christian world appears to some more and more advisable.[118] Few persons amongst the critical students of the Old Testament doubt that the books said to be by Moses are a collection of ancient documents, a compilation made by different individuals living at different periods, with long intervals between them, each with his own point of view. The conscientious examination to which these portions of the sacred writings have been subjected was directed at first to isolated points, and in order to exercise freely the critical faculties so much in evidence now, it was necessary to modify the generally accepted view that the religion of the Jews was cast in one piece, and perfect at the first. It was necessary to separate the ancient documents from those of a more recent date, but the attempt to make an exact chronological table of the earlier history of the Hebrews was abandoned. Until the death of Solomon only round numbers could be used, even the date of the oldest fact in history, the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, cannot definitely be fixed. Amongst the Egyptologists, whose testimony is of the greatest value, there is great hesitation in assigning a date, though the greater number hold to the fifteenth century B.C. Their representations with regard to Moses are so devoid of definite historical data as to envelop his personality in great mystery. The idea of a revelation expressly delivered to the Jewish people acquired a more definite form in the Middle Ages; and from the Reformation the theory was promulgated, amongst those to whom the idea was not repugnant, that to a small portion of humanity only--the elect--had been consigned the task of disseminating the knowledge of religious truth in the world. The study of the Scriptures spread to all classes where it was not forbidden to the laity, and from that time millions of human beings knew no other literature.